Page 583 - swanns-way

what Swann might say.’ Oh, mercy, there’s the conductor
stopping for me; here have I been chatting away to you, and
would have gone right past the Rue Bonaparte, and never
noticed... Will you be so very kind as to tell me whether my
plume is straight?’
And Mme. Cottard withdrew from her muff, to offer it
to Swann, a white-gloved hand from which there floated,
with a transier-ticket, an atmosphere of fashionable life that
pervaded the omnibus, blended with the harsher fragrance
of newly cleaned kid. And Swann felt himself overflowing
with gratitude to her, as well as to Mme. Verdurin (and al-
most to Odette, for the feeling that he now entertained for
her was no longer tinged with pain, was scarcely even to
be described, now, as love), while from the platform of the
omnibus he followed her with loving eyes, as she gallantly
threaded her way along the Rue Bonaparte, her plume erect,
her skirt held up in one hand, while in the other she clasped
her umbrella and her card-case, so that its monogram could
be seen, her muff dancing in the air before her as she went.
To compete with and so to stimulate the moribund feel-
ings that Swann had for Odette, Mme. Cottard, a wiser
physician, in this case, than ever her husband would have
been, had grafted among them others more normal, feel-
ings of gratitude, of friendship, which in Swann’s mind were
to make Odette seem again more human (more like other
women, since other women could inspire the same feelings
in him), were to hasten her final transformation back into
that Odette, loved with an undisturbed affection, who had
taken him home one evening after a revel at the painter’s, to

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